Mountain News: Granby still living with Marv’s rampage

GRANBY, Colo. – It’s been more than three years since Marvin
Heemeyer drove a bulldozer from the muffler shop he owned, the driver’s seat
concealed in a fortress of concrete and steel, guns protruding, and proceeded
to terrorize Granby for the better part of an afternoon.

Heemeyer damaged or gutted 13 buildings during what instantly
was labeled a “rampage” before his contraption stalled in the partially
crumbled basement of a Gambles store. There, his behemoth smoking, he turned
the gun on himself, taking no questions as to why.

A taped recording that had been mailed beforehand answered some
of the questions. Heemeyer had felt wronged in a zoning dispute. He believed
the town had incorrectly permitted a neighbouring landowner to erect a noisy,
dusty batch plant for gravel operations.

Among those sent fleeing for their lives that afternoon in 2004
was Patrick Brower, editor and publisher of the Sky-Hi News. Heemeyer’s
grunting bulldozer crashed into the newspaper office only moments after Brower
and another editor from nearby Winter Park fled out the back door.

Brower says that Granby has recovered physically. He admits
that Granby needed a touching up. It now has a brand new town hall and library,
both bigger and better than what preceded them. The commercial buildings are
mostly rebuilt.

But a legacy of sourness lingers, he says. Somebody with a
project before the planning commission or town board will take umbrage at the
first sign of evaluation. “Now I know how Marv felt,” they may say. Or, “Don’t
make me pull another Marv.” And, “Maybe Marv wasn’t so crazy after all.”

Brower says government should not roll over and play dead.
Small-town government is not “oppressive.” Town government, he says, had given
Heemeyer some, but not all, of what he asked. Heemeyer was not wronged — merely
wrong.

“I hope people will think twice in the future about invoking
Marv’s legacy of recklessness and costly revenge all in the name of pride and
anger.”

End of story?

No. The next week the newspaper published a letter from Lenny
Brooks “and everyone else that is sick of your tirade.” Like Heemeyer, Brooks
lives in nearby Grand Lake at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. He
claims everyone he has talked with agrees that, had they walked in Heemeyer’s
shoes, they, too, would have felt wronged.

“Everyone has limits, and when you’re pushed into a corner, you
fight. Everyone fights with the weapons at hand,” he says.

“The law is not always black and white,” he adds. “Abuse of
power can be subtle.”